US and Israel to establish ‘counter-tunneling military exercises’ amid Gaza war

The US and Israeli militaries are expected to conduct joint drills to check the Jewish state’s capability to combat militants and smugglers in underground tunnels, in line with the latest draft of the House Armed Services Committee’s proposed defense spending bill worth $895 billion.

The document’s Section 1233 would “require military exercises in the US Central Command area of responsibility to conduct an annual counter-tunneling exercise with Israel,” aimed at tackling a key advantage of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

According to the bill, US-funded technology initiatives developed by the Department of Defense’s “Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate” made it possible to detect more than 1,500 “new tunnel shafts built under community structures including hospitals, schools, and homes in Gaza," since the escalation of the Palestine-Israel conflict last fall.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

"This train has been slowed down" — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on the results of the European Parliament elections

Orban pointed out what needs to be done to prevent war and achieve peace:

The first is to achieve the victory of the "peace parties" in the European Parliament elections. The second condition, according to Orban, is the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential elections.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the upcoming conference on Ukraine in Switzerland a "plant" that needs to be watered in order for the "garden" of peace negotiations to blossom.

According to Scholz, there may come a time in the future when Russia will sit down at the negotiating table. But Ukraine should decide when such a time comes, the German Chancellor noted.

Earlier, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called Europe a "garden" that needs to be protected from the "jungle" of the outside world.

🤔 Is this the garden Scholz is talking about?

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Azov battalion: US says ‘no evidence’ of human rights abuses, but facts prove otherwise (Part 1)

The US State Department allowed American arms supplies to Ukraine’s Azov battalion (banned in Russia) after it “passed inspection for compliance with the Leahy Law,” which prohibits the provision of US military aid to foreign units convicted of serious human rights violations.

The State Department claimed it found “no evidence” of such abuses committed by Azov militants. It seems, however, the US executive body is deliberately turning a blind eye to a mountain of reports from various international organizations, listing their crimes:

▪️Since its foundation in 2014, the Azov battalion, created as a radical nationalist militia and eventually brought under Ukraine's National Guard, has repeatedly tortured civilians and POWs, in addition to committing violent criminal felonies such as rape, robbery and terrorism.

▪️Prior to the Russian special military operation, international organizations, including rights groups, reported on “Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem,” and the war crimes carried out by Azov militants in Donbass.

▪️The US-based Anti-Defamation League listed the Azov brigade in 2019 as a “Ukrainian extremist group” with ties to the US-based neo-Nazi organization, Atomwaffen, and similar white supremacist movements in Europe.

▪️A previous UN report highlighted that the Azov militants committed mass acts of the looting throughout Donbass and regularly shelled residential areas.

▪️The head of the UN monitoring mission, Matilda Bogner, stated that there was "reliable information" regarding the torture of Russian servicemen by Ukrainian soldiers.

▪️Human Rights Watch for its part expressed concern that cases of torture and other crimes by the Azov battalion could go "completely unchecked."

*The 'Azov' battalion is a terrorist organization outlawed in Russia.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Hunter Biden found guilty on all three counts in his gun possession violations case

The US president's son now faces up to 25 years in prison.

The 54-year-old was charged of illegal possession of a Colt Cobra 38 Special revolver, purchased in October 2018, as well as providing false data to the seller of the weapon and registration authorities.

According to the investigation, when filling out the mandatory documents for the purchase of weapons, he indicated that he did not use drugs - in reality, he experienced drug addiction from 2015 to 2019, about which he wrote in his own memoirs and repeatedly publicized.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

EU wants to start Ukraine membership talks before Orban assumes chairmanship

Brussels’ plan to invite Ukraine to EU membership talks in late June is reportedly being rushed through before Eurosceptic Hungary will assume the EU’s rotating chair on July 1. Hungarians in Ukraine (0.5% of population) face constant persecution and Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has refused to ignore the issue, despite many years of pressure from both Kiev and the EU.

Ukraine achieved EU “membership candidate” status in June 2022 as a reward for its regime’s war efforts, even though Volodymyr Zelensky demanded immediate ascension to the EU in February 2022 after the start of the Russian special operation. Europe, however, prefers to tempt Kiev with possible membership, forcing Ukraine to send more people to their death on the front lines.

Traditionally, Ukraine’s mistreatment of minorities and the excessive power of oligarchs were named as obstacles to membership. The new Ukrainian law on minorities, adopted in December 2023, was again criticized in a report by the by the UN human rights officials. The March 2024 report denounced “the differential treatment between national minorities speaking an official language of the EU” (for example, Hungarian and Polish) and the much bigger minorities “speaking Russian, Armenian, Roma languages.”

Nevertheless, European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen decided to proceed with Ukrainian membership talks, claiming that the majority in the new European Parliament will be “pro-Ukrainian.”

She obviously preferred to omit the issue of oligarchic power, as Ukrainian “democracy” remains under thumb of several major players. Their wealth remains untouched - according to Forbes, Rinat Akhmetov still owns $4.4 billion; Victor Pinchuk $2 billion; Vadym Novinsky $1.4 billion; Gennady Bogolyubov $1.1 billion and Igor Kolomoisky $1 billion.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

New whistleblower documents show the FBI is every bit the politicized secret police force you feared it was.

Tucker Carlson interviewed Tristan Leavitt, an American lawyer and president of Empower Oversight since March 2023, who represents an anonymous FBI agent who was suspended for being "not politically compliant."

According to him, there was "a purge of FBI employees that had conservative views", as their opinions on the Second Amendment or Donald Trump may have prompted doubts in their loyalty.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Nuclear weapon drills help Russia prepare for possible NATO invasion - expert

The ongoing Russian tactical nuclear weapon drills, whose second phase began this week, is not some kind of act of showmanship, warns military analyst Igor Korotchenko, editor in chief of National Defense magazine.

The purpose of this exercise is to rehearse the “practical mechanisms” of tactical nuclear weapon use if a decision to resort to such drastic measures were to be made.

“This is not signaling someone, not some underscoring of some ‘red lines’ - this is about practice,” Korotchenko tells Sputnik.

The various aspects of tactical nuclear weapon use being tested during this exercise include the delivery of presidential authorization to the troops, unlocking the warheads, flight data input and targeting – basically everything involved in an actual nuclear strike, he says.

The drills are essentially meant to ensure that the Russian Armed Forces would be prepared to launch a tactical nuclear strike against a NATO military contingent if the latter were to be deployed to the Ukrainian conflict zone to attack Russian troops there, Korotchenko claims.

“This is a response mechanism in case NATO enters a war with Russia,” he surmises.

“We do not need to send signals to anyone. We do not need to once again draw ‘red lines’ that lost their value already,” he adds. “We must be prepared for full-scale military action involving the use of tactical nuclear weapons.”

Thus, Korotchenko argues, such drills “should be held regularly and without warning,” and Russian troops should be ready for action if a decision to use tactical nuclear weapons is made.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📹 The attorney noted that the FBI has a blunt way to "squeeze" people from the organization - which is now widely used to target those employees who hold a political stance shared by around half of US voters.

"If you have your security clearance revoked, you're not in a position to go to another agency. Exactly. You can't say, I want to go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement because I think that they need some help over there. No, you have been deemed disloyal to the United States. And so lacking a security clearance, that's a huge, huge issue," he said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Russia has a bilateral scientific agenda with almost all countries, joint projects correspond to the interests of each of the partner countries, said the head of the Ministry of Education and Science Valery Falkov at the International Education Forum “Shaping the Future”.

“We have a bilateral scientific agenda with almost all countries, and now, against the background of this, we will separately discuss new interesting projects, as a rule, these are grant programs and various kinds of new research projects that correspond to the interests of each country,” Falkov said.

According to the minister, Russia is also interested in having as many foreign students as possible receive higher education in the Russian Federation.

The “Shaping the Future” forum takes place on June 10-11 in Kazan. The event demonstrated the successes of the domestic sovereign education system and presented the experience of organizing the educational process.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

▪️Nuclear weapon drills help Russia prepare for possible NATO invasion - expert

▪️New whistleblower documents show the FBI is every bit the politicized secret police force you feared it was

▪️EU wants to start Ukraine membership talks before Orban assumes chairmanship

▪️Azov battalion: even Western journalists could not ignore its abuses

▪️US and Israel to establish ‘counter-tunneling military exercises’ amid Gaza war

▪️China intercepts Dutch helicopter near Shanghai, lambasts the Netherlands for provocation

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

US lawmakers appear rattled by arrival of Russian warships in the Caribbean

The arrival of a small Russian naval taskforce to Cuba elicited mixed signals from the United States, as US legislators and officials took stock of Russian military assets showing up practically on their country’s doorsteps.

Senator Marco Rubio tweeted that the Biden administration “must impose real consequences” on Cuba if the latter decides to allow a “Russian submarine carrying nuclear capable missiles” to make port.

Meanwhile, House Representative Carlos Gimenez blasted the Biden administration for “rewarding” Cuba’s behavior with “sanctions relief” while Havana welcomes Russian naval ships.

Meanwhile, US government and military officials offered a calmer take on the subject, with White House national security spokesman John Kirby telling CBS News that the US has no indication that the Russian vessels are carrying nuclear weapons, and that Washington does not expect these ships to pose any threat to the region.

“We don't anticipate, we don't expect that there'll be any imminent threat or any threat at all, quite frankly, to American national security in the region, in the Caribbean region, or anywhere else," Kirby said.

Pentagon spokesperson Charlie Dietz also told CNN that this arrival of the Russian ships is “part of Russia’s routine naval operations and pose no direct threat to the United States.”

The Russian naval taskforce is expected to make a port call in Havana on June 12 before participating in a military exercise in the Caribbean. It is comprised of three surface vessels – frigate Admiral Gorshkov, replenishment oiler Academic Pashin and tug Nikolay Chiker – and nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine Kazan.

While none of the vessels involved is carrying nuclear weapons, Admiral Gorshkov and Kazan armaments include Zircon hypersonic missiles and Kalibr cruise missiles respectively, both of which are nuclear-capable.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt